Monday, August 11, 2008

Veteran gets one-on-one chat with Franken

stcloudtimes.com • August 9, 2008

On Friday, DFL-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken demonstrated how true that saying can be, when a roundtable on veterans issues at Brigitte’s Cafe his campaign scheduled drew only one participant.

Josh John, a St. Cloud resident who said he served in the Navy from 2000-04, had Franken to himself for an hour as he described difficulties he faced returning from his tour of duty and the help he received from his Veterans Services Office and the St. Cloud VA Medical Center.

“When I first asked for help at the VA, I got kind of a bad attitude from one person, so I ended up leaving and not registering,” he said.

“A year later, the stress was getting to me. I started secluding myself from my family, not wanting to do anything,” he said.

“My mom and my aunt eventually got me to talk with my county VSO. He got me registered with the VA and since then, I haven’t had a problem. I’ve gotten a lot of help, and every question I’ve gotten answered,” John said.

Franken, battling to unseat U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., in this fall’s election, discussed his proposal to expand veterans benefits, what he called a lack of leadership from Coleman, and recent gains on veterans issues he said had only been made because of a Democratic-controlled Congress.

“Everyone’s running around saying Congress never gets anything done,” he said. “But despite 90 filibuster threats by Senate Republicans, it took Democrats to get the new GI Bill passed and to finally fully fund VA health care.”